Web applications are fun to build. They are like the funky airplanes of Web sites. Web applications allow the designer and developer to get together and solve a problem for their customers that the customers might not have even know they had. But most Web applications are slow and tedious. Even the fastest of them has lots of free time for your customers to go get a snack (worst of all) head off to a faster Web site. Its that dreaded hourglass! You click a process button and the hourglass appears as the Web application consults the server and the server thinks about what its going to send back to you.

The name AJAX is short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It uses the JavaScript XMLHttpRequest function to create a tunnel from the clients browser to the server and transmit information back and forth without having to refresh the page. The data travels in XML format because it transmits complex data types over clear text.